Crusader Castle: The Desert Fortress of Kerak

By Michael S Fulton

This is the ultimate history and guide to Kerak, one of the greatest crusader castles, tracing the architectural history of the castle over the course of 800 years.

The formidable strongholds built by the crusaders are among the most iconic castles of the Middle Ages. These mighty structures offer fascinating insights into the lives of those who built and occupied them, and the role they played in the region’s deep history of conflict. The castle of Kerak, in modern Jordan, is one of the largest, most imposing and best preserved of them all, and Michael Fulton’s detailed, authoritative and highly illustrated account is the ideal guide to it. His close analysis of the fabric of this monumental building, and his description of the centuries of conflict associated with it, make absorbing reading. He takes the reader through the early military history of the castle – from the time it was constructed in the 1140s by Pagan the Butler, through the provocative actions of Reynald of Châtillon and Saladin’s capture of the castle in 1188. He also recounts its later history under Muslim rule, when the castle served as a treasury for the Ayyubid and Mamluk sultans of Egypt. Falling into decline under the Ottomans, Kerak has since regained its importance as a tourist attraction.

A part-by-part examination of the castle and surviving elements of the adjoining medieval town allows readers to appreciate the different stages in the development of this incredible structure and to visualize how it evolved and functioned at different points in time. The detailed architectural guide will be an essential reference for readers who have the opportunity to visit the castle and for those who are keen to gain the best possible understanding of it without going to the site.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Pen and Sword
• Release date: Mar 31, 2024
• ISBN: 9781399091275

Michael S Fulton

Dr Michael S. Fulton is a medieval historian and archaeologist with a special interest in fortifications, siege warfare and the crusades. He is a visiting scholar with the History Department at the University of British Columbia. He has published many articles and papers on aspects of mechanical artillery, crusader castles, siege tactics and defences as well as the book Artillery in the Era of the Crusades.

Book preview

Crusader Castle

Crusader Castle

The Desert Fortress of Kerak

Michael S. Fulton

First published in Great Britain in 2024 by

Pen & Sword Military

An imprint of Pen & Sword Books Limited

Yorkshire – Philadelphia

Copyright © Michael S. Fulton 2024

ISBN 978 1 39909 126 8

epub ISBN 978 1 39909 126 8

Mobi ISBN 978 1 39909 126 8

The right of Michael S. Fulton to be identified as Author of this Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission from the Publisher in writing.

Pen & Sword Books Limited incorporates the imprints of After the Battle, Atlas, Archaeology, Aviation, Discovery, Family History, Fiction, History, Maritime, Military, Military Classics, Politics, Select, Transport, True Crime, Air World, Frontline Publishing, Leo Cooper, Remember When, Seaforth Publishing, The Praetorian Press, Wharncliffe Local History, Wharncliffe Transport, Wharncliffe True Crime and White Owl.

For a complete list of Pen & Sword titles please contact

PEN & SWORD BOOKS LIMITED

47 Church Street, Barnsley, South Yorkshire, S70 2AS, England

E-mail: [e-mail]

Website: www.pen-and-sword.co.uk

or

PEN AND SWORD BOOKS

1950 Lawrence Rd, Havertown, PA 19083, USA

E-mail: [e-mail]

Website: www.penandswordbooks.com

For

Lucas, Alexander and Nathan

Charli and Tessa

Contents

Preface

Regional Maps

Introduction

Chapter 1 Transjordan before the Crusades

Chapter 2 Frankish Period

Chapter 3 Ayyubid Period

Chapter 4 Mamluk Period

Chapter 5 Ottoman Period

Chapter 6 The Castle

Chapter 7 The Town

Abbreviations

Notes

Bibliography

Preface

Kerak is a castle that has impressed visitors for centuries. Whether it is the first castle you explore or simply the most recent one, its size and state of preservation tend to leave an impression. The aim of this book is to provide a bit of something for everyone, from those with a casual interest in castles, the crusades or the medieval Near East, to established scholars who are fortunate enough to make a career out of studying such things.

A few words on names seems appropriate as this study spans a millennium of history and incorporates a diverse range of actors. In most instances, the personal names of Latin Europeans have been anglicized (e.g. ‘John of Tiberias’). Muslim names have been transliterated using a common Arabic form; however, the names of many figures from the Ottoman period have been provided according to their common English spelling (e.g. ‘Faisal ibn Hussein’, rather than ‘Faysal ibn Husayn’). Likewise, the title of ‘sheik’ has been spelled as such it applies to late Ottoman figures, but not in those instances where earlier Mamluk individuals took this as part of their name (e.g. ‘Sheik Yusuf al-Majaly’ and ‘Shaykh al-Mahmudi’). The spelling of ‘Kerak’, rather than ‘Karak’, has similarly been chosen due to the popularity of the former in general scholarship.

Geographical terms also warrant some clarification. In most instances, ‘Syria’ refers to Bilad al-Sham or ‘greater Syria’. This region is bound by the borders of Egypt and the Arabian Desert to the south, Anatolia to the north, the Mediterranean Sea to the west, and the Euphrates River to the east. ‘Palestine’ denotes the area west of the Great Rift (in this region this consists of the Jordan Valley, the Dead Sea and Wadi ‘Araba) between the Lebanon to the north and the Sinai Desert to the south. ‘Transjordan’ identifies the area east of the Great Rift between ‘Aqaba in the south and the Zarqa River in the north, fading into the desert to the east.

Finally, thanks and acknowledgements are in order. My first trip to the castle, in 2010, was made possible by Marla MacKinnon, Rachel Rabey, Fraser Reed and Victoria Wijnbergen, my weekend travel companions and fellow excavators that summer. In the years since, Robin Brown and Marcus Milwright have both been extremely kind in offering me some very helpful advice, without which this project may have never left the ground. Denys Pringle, whose guidance over the years has been transformative, and Steve Tibble, a great friend and colleague, have each reviewed large parts of the manuscript, which is much improved thanks to their suggestions and corrections. Micaela Sinibaldi has also been gracious enough to provide some targeted feedback in light of her own research. Heather Crowley’s very generous help, which has taken innumerable forms over the past decade, has also been invaluable. The fabulous aerial photographs of the castle come from the Aerial Photographic Archive for Archaeology in the Middle East (APAAME). My thanks to David Kennedy, Bob Bewley and the rest of their team for allowing me to share these. Finally, I owe a great debt of gratitude to my family for their ongoing and seemingly limitless support. It is my hope that my nieces and nephews, to whom this book is dedicated, are able to pursue their passions in life as I have mine.

M.S.F.

Toronto, Canada

Christmas 2022

Map 1. The Near East.

Map 2. Palestine and northern Transjordan.

Map 3. Transjordan and southern Palestine.

Map 4. The Hijaz.

Introduction

In the southern part of Syria, that depending particularly on Jerusalem, very few castles have been preserved. Later occupation is responsible for the destruction of most, but there are some, beyond the Dead Sea, still standing tolerably perfect, but quite undescribed. Rey has published a plan and description of Kerak in the Desert, but neither is his own work: indeed Kerak has never been studied by a medievalist. It has been hailed by Rey, and Professor Oman following him, as an untouched example of Latin military architecture. This claim seems a little dangerous, when it is remembered that Kerak was a Byzantine fortress before it became Crusader, and that after this it was the seat of a powerful Arab principality, and that finally Beibars’s presence is shown by his name on one of the towers. It may well be that the share of Payn of Nablous in the building of it is infinitesimal. At least, until there is better material to work upon, elaborate deductions from it as to the state of Latin military architecture in 1140 are quite out of place.¹

T.E. Lawrence (of Arabia) (undergraduate thesis, 1910)

Ahalf-decade before the outbreak of the First World War and the Arab Revolt that followed, T.E. Lawrence travelled through the Levant as an intrepid undergraduate in 1909, visiting many of the great castles of Syria. He had undertaken the trip in support of a thesis that compared European fortifications with those built in the Near East during the period of the crusades. In a fitting example of the Levant’s long history of conflict, and the importance of Transjordan in the broader region, Lawrence was prevented from visiting Kerak thanks to the disruptive efforts of some Bedouin, who had torn up a section of the Hijaz Railway near Amman. Although our understanding of the castle has improved since Lawrence composed his thesis, his words nevertheless continue to ring true; many scholars and countless tourists have visited Kerak over the past century, yet the great stronghold still awaits comprehensive study and excavation.

The mighty castle that dominates the town of Kerak (al-Karak) is the largest in the modern state of Jordan. In a region that has been occupied and contested for millennia, the castle is a fairly new addition to the landscape, dating back close to 900 years. It was commissioned around 1142 by a Latin noble, Pagan the Butler, and would continue to develop under Frankish rule over the following decades. From the time it was built, Kerak became the seat of power of the largest crusader lordship in the region, a lordship that would grow to become one of the kingdom of Jerusalem’s most important and prestigious by the late twelfth century. Frankish dominance over much of southern Syria ended following Saladin’s great victory at the Battle of Hattin in July 1187. The garrison of Kerak surrendered the following year, ending the first chapter of the castle’s history, and less than fifty years of Frankish rule.

Saladin died in 1193 and his realm was divided between members of his family, the Ayyubids. Kerak remained the regional seat of power in Transjordan. Although never more than a secondary power centre, the castle’s rulers were able to exert relative independence at times, exploiting rifts between the more powerful figures who controlled Cairo and Damascus. Ayyubid authority eventually gave way to that of the Mamluks, who rose to power in Egypt in the 1250s and extended their influence across Syria in the wake of the brief Mongol incursion into the Levant in 1260. Kerak, one of the last outposts of independent Ayyubid authority, fell to the Mamluks in 1263.

Although Kerak continued to thrive as a regional power centre under early Mamluk rule, its significance had peaked by the early fourteenth century, and the political importance and economic prosperity of Transjordan declined thereafter. The process of marginalization continued with the Ottoman conquest of Syria in 1516 and Egypt the following year. Under Ottoman rule, Transjordan became a distant frontier from Constantinople, allowing local tribal groups to dominate the region’s affairs. The Ottomans firmly reasserted their authority in Transjordan in the 1890s, stationing a garrison and local official in Kerak, but this era of renewed interest was short-lived, ending with the collapse of Ottoman power during the First World War. Along with the rest of modern Jordan, Kerak subsequently passed under the authority of the Hashemites, in whose name the nation continues to be governed.

Sources

Thanks to the importance that Kerak held at various times, it was often mentioned by historical commentators. William of Tyre (d. c.1184), archbishop of Tyre and chancellor of the kingdom of Jerusalem, began composing a history of the Latin principalities during the reign of King Amalric. Although William is the best source from a Frankish perspective, his entries relating to actions in Transjordan are often generic and seem confused in places. It is unfortunate that William appears not to have visited the region, unlike Fulcher of Chartres (d. c.1130), chaplain to King Baldwin I and author of a history of the First Crusade and the early Frankish presence in the Levant. To William’s narrative history can be added a number of contemporary charters, which document the presence and grants of the Frankish lords of Kerak and other figures associated with the lordship.

Following Saladin’s rise to power in Egypt in 1169, and his subsequent domination of Muslim Syria from 1174, his campaigns against Kerak were documented by his celebratory biographers, ‘Imad al-Din al-Isfahani (d. 1201) and Baha’ al-Din ibn Shaddad (d. 1324), both of whom enjoyed prominent positions in Saladin’s administration. To these Arabic accounts can be added the letters composed by Saladin’s chief administrator in Egypt, al-Qadi al-Fadil (d. 1200) and the comprehensive history penned by Ibn al-Athir (d. 1233). The latter, who was based in Mosul and served the Zankid dynasty, a branch of which Saladin overthrew in Syria, owed no loyalty to Saladin. Ibn al-Athir’s account extends into the early Ayyubid period, as does the composite history assembled by Abu Shama (d. 1267) and certain Old French continuations of William of Tyre’s history. Ibn Wasil (d. 1298) was another important man of letters in the thirteenth century. His higher education included a brief residency at Kerak in the mid-1230s, following which he enjoyed a career travelling around the Near East in the highest Ayyubid and later Mamluk circles. Some noteworthy details are also to be found in a couple of important Coptic sources, namely the History of the Patriarchs and the narrative history composed by al-Makin ibn al-Adim (d. 1273).

The rise of the Mamluks ushered in a new generation of contemporary historians. Ibn ‘Abd al-Zahir (d. 1293) served in the Mamluk chancery and wrote influential biographies of Sultans Baybars and Qalawun. These works pair well with those authored by two Mamluk emirs, Baybars al-Mansuri (d. 1325), a mamluk of Qalawun and governor of Kerak from 1286 to 1291, and Abu’l-Fida’ (d. 1331), who held Hama from 1310 and passed through Kerak on a number of occasions. Further details and insights into later events surrounding Kerak can be found in the celebrated works of figures such as Ibn al-Furat (d. 1405), al-Maqrizi (d. 1442) and Ibn Taghribirdi (d. 1470), to name only a few. In addition to these narratives, the accounts of certain pilgrims provide snapshots of Kerak as they passed by the castle. These include the German pilgrim Thietmar, who ventured through Transjordan on his way to Sinai in 1218, and the famed Maghribi traveller Ibn Battuta, who passed along the hajj route from Damascus while making his way to Mecca in 1326.

As the importance of Kerak waned from the end of the Mamluk period, it appears less frequently in written records. Early Ottoman references to the castle are rare, limited mostly to census data gathered during the sixteenth century, before such efforts ceased. Not until the nineteenth century were more descriptive accounts of the castle published. These were composed by Western visitors, among the first in centuries, who were drawn by the mysteries and ancient history of the region. The modern, or Western, study of Kerak can be traced back to this collection of nineteenth-century adventurers, geographers and antiquarians.

Ulrich Jasper Seetzen, a German explorer, travelled from Damascus to Acre during the winter and spring of 1806, passing through the Balqa’ and south of the Dead Sea. His route brought him to Kerak, where he stayed from 24 March until 2 April. The next reported visitor, John Lewis Burckhardt, was a Swiss traveller who undertook a journey from Aleppo to Cairo on behalf of the English African Association. Burckhardt, who travelled incognito like Seetzen, spent twenty days at Kerak, longer than he would have liked, from the middle of July 1812. Six years later, Royal Navy officers Charles Leonard Irby and James Mangles spent a week in Kerak in May 1818, near the end of an extensive tour of Egypt and Syria that had begun two years earlier. Prior to their visit, they were joined by William MacMichael, who accompanied their party from Jerusalem to Kerak and onwards to Petra, the site all were most interested in. Sir Henry Layard, an Englishman, arrived in early 1840, having ventured northwards from Petra with intentions of continuing onwards to Jerash. William F. Lynch, leading an American expedition to explore the Dead Sea from the water, made a brief visit to Kerak in May 1848, staying less than twenty-four hours. Similarly interested in the region around the Dead Sea, Félicien de Saulcy, a French antiquarian, spent two nights in Kerak in January 1851.

The first expedition with the primary objective of examining the castle of Kerak was undertaken in 1866 by architect Christophe Mauss and diplomat Henry Sauvaire. They spent a fortnight in the town in April before heading onwards to inspect the castle of Montreal to the south. This venture was part of a broader investigative effort in the Levant initiated by Honoré Théodoric d’Albert, duc de Luynes, whose visit to Kerak two years earlier had impressed on him the value of sending others to conduct a closer examination of the castle and fortified town. In August 1868, Frederick Klein passed through Kerak on his first trip east of the Dead Sea. Klein was a missionary and biblical explorer who had for a long time been a resident of Palestine. Four years later, he returned as a member of a party that also included well-travelled English cleric and naturalist Henry Baker Tristram. In November 1876, Charles Doughty, an English writer and adventurer, accompanied the hajj pilgrimage south from Damascus and visited Kerak for an apparent second time along the way. A pause of sorts followed until March 1890, when it was confirmed to John Gray Hill and his wife, Caroline, that they were the first European travellers to pass through Kerak since Doughty. The Hills, also from England, had settled on a visit to Kerak and Madaba as a consolation when their plan to visit Petra was interrupted by a local conflict around Wadi Musa – their visit to Kerak would not be an enjoyable one.

In 1865, a year after Luynes had started his investigations, the Palestine Exploration Fund (PEF) was established in London. The PEF would coordinate a number of expeditions over the following years, though the first east of the Dead Sea was not undertaken until 1881–82. This was led by British officer Claude Reignier Conder, who famously surveyed Palestine with Herbert (later Lord) Kitchener in the 1870s. Conder made his way through the region north of Kerak until he was forced to cut short his efforts, without having visited the castle.

The imposition of direct Ottoman rule throughout Transjordan, and the stability that accompanied this, saw a surge of visitors to Kerak thereafter. Frederick Jones Bliss, a Lebanese-born American archaeologist with the PEF, spent four nights there in March 1895. The Hills, still hoping to get to Petra, returned to Kerak only weeks later; they were frustrated to learn that the road south was still firmly closed to travellers, but it was not long until the route opened. Six months later, Charles Alexander Hornstein, a native of Jerusalem, born to parents who had emigrated from Europe, spent about five days at Kerak and took a number of photographs before proceeding south to Petra. Theodore Edward Dowling, an Anglican priest and historian of the Eastern Churches, visited the following year. Hill, Hornstein and Dowling, like Klein before them, all published their experiences with the PEF. In August 1896, Czech-born Alois Musil made his first trip to Kerak, in the early part of what would be an extensive career studying and travelling throughout the Arab world.

Marie-Joseph Lagrange, a Dominican priest originally from France but based in Jerusalem, reached Kerak in October 1896. So many Westerners had published accounts of their visits to the castle by this time that Lagrange felt it unnecessary to recount his own journey. Like many others at that time, he passed through Kerak on his way to Petra, where he would record more valuable observations. The first visit to Palestine by Lucien Gautier, a Swiss theologian, corresponded with Ottoman efforts to impose direct rule over Transjordan in 1893–94, leading to a ban on travel to Kerak and the frustration of Gautier’s hopes of journeying around the Dead Sea. Six years later, Gautier was able to realize his dream and found his way to Kerak in March 1899, where the local mutasarrif was surprised to learn that he planned to go north, rather than make the trip south to Petra like most others. By the time William Libbey and Franklin E. Hoskins arrived in early 1902, Kerak had become something of a tourist attraction for scholars and antiquarians based in Jerusalem, and a regular stop on one of the routes to Petra, where most scholarly attention in Transjordan remained. Not until the arrival of the eminent French medievalist Paul Deschamps in 1929 would Kerak receive the kind of devoted attention that it had been afforded by Mauss and Sauvaire more than six decades earlier.²

Academic Scholarship

While increasing numbers of European travellers were visiting Kerak, a parallel group of scholars was beginning to take a closer look at the historical material relating to the castle. E.G. Rey’s Étude sur les monuments de l’architecture militaire des croisés (1871) is perhaps the first modern study of medieval fortifications in the Levant. Although Rey did not visit Kerak, he had access to the notes made by Mauss, as well as Mauss’s plan of the site. Looking beyond just the narrative accounts, Rey attempted to use charter evidence to identify locations associated with the broader Frankish lordship administered from the castle. His later ‘Seigneurs de Mont-Réal’ (1898) provides a brief history of the lords of Transjordan, which was not included in his earlier discussion of the castle. By the time this appeared, however, a similar study, Seigneurs du Crac de Montréal (1883), had already been published by the distinguished medievalist Louis de Mas Latrie.

Deschamps, assisted by architect François Anus, was the first to bring together the history of Kerak and a first-hand appreciation of the site. His study of Kerak, including a survey, appears in the second volume, La défense du Royaume de Jérusalem, of his magnum opus, Les Château des Croisés en Terre-Sainte (1939), which is dedicated to the strongholds located in what was once the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem. Although much of Deschamps’ work has been developed and improved upon over the decades, no scholar, before or since, has yet equalled the contribution he made to advancing a scholarly understanding of the castle. The influence of his study is readily apparent in many popular and influential works on so-called crusader castles, including Wolfgang Müller-Wiener’s Burgen der Kreuzritter (Castles of the Crusaders) (1966) and Hugh Kennedy’s Crusader Castles (1994).

The first archaeological excavations in the castle were carried out by Robin Brown in 1987. Although these efforts were limited to a probe dug in the southern palatial complex, the results, published in 1989 and revised in 2013, have established an important benchmark. Prior to Brown’s excavations, Denys Pringle had conducted investigations in 1981 and 1983. Pringle was most interested in the castle’s church and those found in the town, which he surveyed, publishing his findings in the first volume of his exemplary Churches of the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem (1993). Since Deschamps published his study, the only attempt to provide comprehensive original architectural observations of the castle was carried out by Thomas Biller, Daniel Burger and Hans-Heinrich Häffner in 1998. Although they did not have enough time to take detailed measurements, and their investigations were limited to the upper ward of the castle, the results they published, ‘Neues zu den Burgen’ (1999), provide a valuable update and encourage further study. Beyond the walls of the castle, the efforts of other archaeologists, such as Jeremy Johns and Bethany Walker, have led to considerable advances in our appreciation of the broader region, including changes in settlement and consumption patterns.

Kerak has also continued to attract the interest of historians. In Monarchy and Lordships (1989), Steve Tibble was one of the first to look beyond the rather simple histories of the lordship of Transjordan put forward by Mas Latrie and Rey. By far the most detailed study of the lordship, however, was published a year later by Hans Eberhard Mayer, the pre-eminent historian of twelfth-century Latin charter evidence. Mayer’s Die Kreuzfahrerherrschaft Montréal (1990) complements a series of studies he produced examining the principal lordships of the kingdom of Jerusalem. Although most work on Kerak continues to focus on the period when the castle was under Frankish control, efforts by figures like Joseph Drory have helped shed increasing light on its history over the following century.

The declining importance of Kerak during the late Mamluk and most of the Ottoman period saw the castle receive less notice by contemporary commentators, and modern historians as a result. Renewed scholarly interest accompanies the reappearance of source material from the nineteenth century. Peter Gubser devoted his doctoral research, which included a trip to Kerak in 1968, to an examination of the town in the period following its reappearance in records of the later Ottoman era, subsequently published as Politics and Change in al-Karak, Jordan (1973). A generation later, Eugene Rogan’s Frontiers of the State in the Late Ottoman Empire (1999), which similarly built on his PhD dissertation, has helped to fit Kerak into the broader fabric of Transjordan in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

The most comprehensive study of Kerak currently available is Marcus Milwright’s Fortress of the Raven (2014). The ultimate result of his PhD work, Milwright provides a history of the castle, showing a clear effort to represent the different phases of occupation evenly, as the backdrop for his original examination of ceramic evidence from the site. This has helped to better situate the stronghold in the context of the surrounding landscape, particularly during the Ayyubid and Mamluk periods. Micaela Sinibaldi’s ongoing analysis of twelfth-century pottery discovered in the broader region, similarly building on her PhD studies, promises to provide an invaluable complement, while her initial contextualization of the Frankish lordship, in ‘The Crusader Lordship of Transjordan’ (2022), pushes back against the still prevalent notion that Frankish Transjordan was a remote frontier. Since the 1980s, a group of Italian scholars, led by Guido Vannini, has investigated the Frankish outpost of al-Wu‘ayra, near Petra, and has more recently conducted excavations at the castle of Montreal, between Petra and Kerak. The first notable study focusing on Kerak to come out of this broader project has been published by Lorenzo Fragai. Building on Brown’s work, his ‘Mamluk Qa’a at Kerak Castle’ (2019) has explored certain notable internal structures, contributing to a better appreciation of the development of the castle during the Ayyubid and Mamluk periods.

Although Kerak has attracted the interest of visitors and scholars for centuries, the stronghold continues to withhold many secrets. What follows is an attempt to collate and present what is known about the castle, particularly its history. As it is assumed most readers will be interested primarily in the Frankish period, a conspicuous emphasis has been placed on the twelfth century. Looking forward, it is hoped that this book will be the first part of a larger project, with the ultimate goal of helping us better understand this magnificent structure. With an eye to this, certain foundations will be provided for: better appreciating the political and social significance that the castle has held at different times; more accurately understanding the development of the standing architecture; and discerning what life may have been like for those who lived in and around this great fortress over the centuries.

Chapter 1

Transjordan before the Crusades

The burden of Moab. Because in the night Ar of Moab is laid waste, and brought to silence; because in the night Kir of Moab is laid waste, and brought to silence;

Isaiah 15:1 (KJV)

Kerak, like innumerable other places in the Near East, has been a site of human congregation and interaction for thousands of years. Although large enough to warrant mention in the Old Testament of the Bible, it was not until the Middle Ages that Kerak became the dominant community in the area. Only with the arrival of the Franks and the construction of the great castle, however, does the town appear with any regularity in historical records.

Situated about 1,000m above sea level, Kerak is positioned roughly midway along the western side of a limestone plateau, Ard al-Karak. To the north and south, the plateau is defined by Wadi al-Mujib and Wadi al-Hasa respectively. These valleys cleave the landscape, dividing up Transjordan and separating what was once the centre of Moab from the Balqa’ to the north and ancient Edom to the south. To the west of the Kerak plateau, the ground falls away to the salty shores of the Dead Sea, more than 400m below sea level, and Wadi ‘Araba (the portion of the Great Rift between the Gulf of ‘Aqaba and the Dead Sea). To the east, the ground slopes gradually into the Syrian Desert. Along the western side of the plateau, which receives the most annual rainfall, the soil is rich but shallow. The karst landscape provides a number of springs, which flow out into the wadis (valleys) from between the limestone layers of the bedrock. Traditionally, the region’s people also relied heavily on cisterns to collect water during the limited winter rains for use in the dry summer months.¹

The old town of Kerak is surrounded by wadis that cut into the landscape as it begins to break apart and fall away to the Dead Sea. These valleys collect to the west of the town, forming Wadi al-Karak, which provides a natural path down to Wadi ‘Araba. The rise on which the town sits is the northern extension of a spur, the remainder, a height called Umm al-Thalj (‘mother of snow’), overlooks the town from beyond a dip in the landscape to the south. Looking northwest from the site of the castle, at the southern end of the town, the southern part of the Dead Sea can be seen through Wadi al-Karak, with Jerusalem visible in the distance on a clear day.²

Today, the dry landscape around Kerak appears almost barren to most who visit the castle in the hot summer months. Earlier in the year, however, following the winter rains, things are much greener, and particularly fertile parts of the wadi hint at the region’s former productivity. In the early fourteenth century, Abu’l-Fida’, the scholarly prince of Hama, described the valley below Kerak as having ‘a hammam, and many gardens with excellent fruits, such as apricots, pears, pomegranates, and others’.³ John Lewis Burckhardt, who visited the region in the early nineteenth century, remarked that the district to the north of the town was quite fertile and large tracts of it were cultivated by the people of Kerak. Much as Abu’l-Fida’ had five centuries earlier, Burckhardt observed that a number of springs sprouted in the wadis to the north and west of the town; these facilitated the cultivation of some vegetables and many olive trees.⁴ When Charles Leonard Irby and James Mangles reached Kerak a few years later, in May 1818, approaching the town from the valley to the west, they encountered fields of grain with grazing cattle. As they neared the foot of the town hill, they found that a stream still flowed into the valley, and along its bank was a strip of garden, ‘in which we observed olives, pomegranates, and figs, with some vegetables’. Gardens containing olive, pomegranate and fig trees, as well as vines, were similarly noted by subsequent nineteenth-century travellers.⁵ Some springs can still be found today, betrayed by the often green vegetation around them, which stands out in what is otherwise a fairly dry landscape in the summer.

References to Kerak are rare before the 1140s, when the Franks began work on the great castle that now dominates the town, but there is plenty of evidence of earlier human settlement. Pottery remains indicate the presence of people stretching back to the chalcolithic period, around 4000 BC; however, this does not mean that the site was occupied continuously throughout the year.⁶ Gubser has suggested that it was during the early Iron Age, around 1000 BC, when the region was part of the kingdom of Moab, that Kerak was first permanently settled.⁷ The town’s name appears to come from the Moabite qir, and Aramaic karkha, both referring to a fortified town.⁸ In the second century BC, the region was dominated by the Nabataeans, who ruled a great mercantile kingdom from their capital of Petra. Kerak would have benefitted from the north–south flow of Nabataean trade east of the Great Rift, along what was known as the King’s Highway. The Romans began exerting their influence in the region from the first century BC, and formally annexed Transjordan near the start of the second century AD, during the reign of Trajan. The Romans further developed the main north–south road, renaming it the via nova Traiana, in honour of the emperor.

As the western half of the Roman Empire collapsed in the fifth century, Kerak remained a part of the eastern, more Greek component – what historians have come to call the Byzantine Empire. Following the legalization of Christianity in the early fourth century, the empire was formally divided into diocese. In the mid-fifth century, the bishop of Jerusalem was elevated to the standing of a patriarch, to whom reported the archbishops of Caesarea, Scythopolis (Bethsan) and Petra (Wadi Musa). Kerak, known then as Χαραχμωαβ (‘Charachmoab’), became a part of Palaestina Tertia, the metropolitan of which was the archbishop of Petra. A bishop of Kerak appears to have become the seat of a diocese by 536, when a bishop of Charachmoba is noted to have attended the synod held in Jerusalem that year.⁹

In the Church of St George in Madaba, the town, identified as ‘[Char] achmob[a]’ (or Karak of Moab), is found on the famous sixth-century mosaic Madaba Map. It appears as a walled town, though it is debatable to what degree this might represent an actual depiction of the settlement at that time versus a more general stylistic representation. Kerak is also one of the seven cities of Transjordan depicted in the eighth-century mosaics of the church of St Stephen in Umm al-Rasas. It is labelled ‘Charach Moba’, and is again presented as a walled town.¹⁰ Although the evidence is far from conclusive, these representations of Kerak suggest that the town was